Every once in a while it comes up. We try not to talk about it because it makes people uncomfortable, but it’s impossible to avoid all of the daily triggers that could result in words being exchanged about my urban-ness.

The last time it happened I was at the dentist, fairly well stoned after a procedure that required sedation. One of the dentist girls was helping me to the car when some sort of truth-serum moment happened and I blurted out, “You know I’m straight outta Compton, right?” I profiled her. She was black so I figured she’d want to know.

She laughed and in the most condescending way possible said, “Sir, now we both know that’s not true.” I profiled her, then she profiled me, and middle-aged white guys get painted with the broad brush and ridiculed behind their backs and stereotyped just like everyone else. As I stumbled onto the seat of the car I said, “Now why would you say such a thing?” Closing the door, she said, “Sir, you’re a nice man but you ain’t got even a little street cred.”

And that’s why we don’t discuss my roots in public because every time I think we’re gonna break down cultural barriers I end up getting laughed at and, well, profiled. It typically ends in name calling. People from my own neighborhood don’t accept me. After they look at me with a quick glance they decide I don’t belong in Compton and in a quick few seconds they label me – tragically unhip.

None of this changes the fact that I was born in Lynwood, California, which according to geographical proximity makes me straight outta Compton. People just can’t handle the truth. Everyone wants to talk about making things better in the neighborhood and about being proud of where you’re from and everyone’s tattooing their area codes on their cheek, but those same people turn and run – turn and shun -the square old white guy who tries to claim Compton.

What can I say? I’m a casualty of the street. A guy trapped between two societies – totally misunderstood by one culture and totally understood and despised by the other. In reality, I’m indifferent about being straight out of Compton, I mean, it just is, but I do have to say that I typically walk around with a fairly obvious urban swagger.

♦

I went to a job interview not too long ago, a bunch of white executives sitting around a conference room table. It’s the typical mating ritual with them asking me cliché questions and me giving them brilliant, funny and introspective answers. At one point someone asks, “So what do you like to do in your spare time, where are you from?” And I think … I could blow this whole interview into a million pieces if I just tell them the truth with a straight face, if I say, “I’m straight outta Compton!”

But I don’t say that, I never say that (unless I’m blitzed on pharmaceuticals) because they’ll just think I’m being a wiseguy and then I’ll have to explain that black people and white people used to live together and they’ll ask me why, if I was born in the hood, I’m not cooler and hipper?

So I say I’m from a white suburb in Ohio and I get the job and the world stays segregated and no one gets any street cred, but no one loses any either and life is black and white with no funny grayness … and everything is based on intellectual profiles and I can’t be from Compton and he can’t be from Beverly Hills … and everybody’s from somewhere but somewhere needs to perfectly align with society’s perception.